[The kind of petty moderation shown above is intensely annoying because it's completely unnecessary and not, in any meaningful way, 'corrective'. So, whoever the individual that has guardianship over the Blender community on Stack Exchange is, their actions display a greater interest in Users being compliant with respect to (presumably) text-formatting rules, than said-same Users being able to clearly express a point. In other words, emphasis (capitalisation) in the original post is used for express clarity not, as the moderator seems to deem(?), errors in need of corrected. SMDH.]
Browsing various Blender 3D communities on the interwebs the question of popularity occasionally crops up and why certain platforms don't seem to be used that much. Stack Exchange is one, Reddit is the other.
Why is that?
They're not at all especially "toxic communities", no more so than any other, and questions and answer can be freely asked and given. So, what then is the issue?
In a nutshell it's the moderating teams.
In both instances the communities have what amount to de facto gatekeepers at the helm that seem more concerned about grammar and format than they do communication; sure, there are rules to keep these places from descending into 'Chan chaos, but they are policed a little too eagerly and strictly, the aforementioned grammar nazis and format freaks being the case in point.
Being ‘free and open' platforms for communication and discussion is relative.
And still, people wonder.